Reading Rainbow Revised

Okay, so the whole arrange books by color thing appeals to both my sense of aethetics, and my slight tendency towards Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I was the only first grader I knew that would spend hours rearranging her 100 count box of crayolas, insisting to my less discriminating siblings that burnt orange came before burnt sienna but after atomic tangerine.





But that pesky OCD is a double edged sword when it comes to books, as I've mentioned before. Asthetically, the books-by-color is preferable. Logically it makes sense to shelve them according to author and genre so that you can find them.

Solution: Librarything

Librarything is one of those simple, brilliant websites that makes a bookey like me drool. It's basic function is a online book catalog. You can do 200 books for free, but for 25 bucks you get a lifetime subscription for as many as you'd like, and you are able to catalog all of your books. You get access to major libraries all over the world, amazon.com, and the other books posted by librarything users. There are also great features attached to Librarything. You can compare your library to other booklovers, participate in book swaps and discussions, & write reviews. You also get book recommendations based on your library.

But the feature that makes me see this as a potential solution to my decor delemma is that when you catalog your books you can tag them. I keep track of the genre, where I got the book, & whether I've read it or not this way. With a click of a button I can pull up every book I've ever got as an advanced readers copy from work, or every book in my library still unread. And now, every book with a green spine.

This way, when I'm looking for my copy of "1984" and I can't remember what color it is, I just go to librarything, pull up "1984" and see that it's shelved in the black section. Voila! Both sides of my OCD self are satisfied.

_originally posted on fb with pictures 9/29/09_